India caps airline fares as IndiGo crisis leaves hundreds stranded for fifth day
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Airport sources told Reuters that 124 IndiGo flights in Bengaluru have been cancelled on Dec 6.
PHOTO: REUTERS
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MUMBAI/BENGALURU – India capped airline fares on Dec 6, as hundreds of passengers gathered outside Bengaluru and Mumbai airports after 385 IndiGo flights were cancelled on the fifth day of a crisis that has hit the country’s biggest airline.
IndiGo has cancelled thousands of flights this week due to a shortage of pilots after it failed to plan adequately for new rules limiting pilots’ work hours.
The government responded on Dec 5, announcing special relief for the carrier and the operation of additional trains to help clear the backlog.
The Delhi airport posted on X on Dec 6 that flight operations were steadily resuming, but cancellations remained rife elsewhere.
‘Waiting for my luggage’
With IndiGo’s spate of cancellations, fares rose on flights operated by other airlines on popular routes. The government said it was capping fares to maintain pricing discipline, without disclosing details of the caps.
The Civil Aviation Ministry said it would “continue to closely monitor fare levels through real-time data and active coordination with airlines”.
Fares were last capped during the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020.
The flight cancellations are the biggest crisis ever for 20-year-old IndiGo, which has prided itself for on-time performance and lured passengers with low-cost fares.
IndiGo has admitted it failed to plan properly ahead of a Nov 1 deadline to implement stricter rules for pilots around night flying and weekly rest, which ultimately led to problems around roster planning this week.
On Dec 5, more than 1,000 IndiGo flights were cancelled
The Delhi airport in a post on social media platform X on Dec 6 said flight operations are steadily resuming, but some IndiGo flights continue to be affected.
Airport sources told Reuters that 124 IndiGo flights in Bengaluru have been cancelled on Dec 6, 109 in Mumbai, 86 in New Delhi and 66 in Hyderabad.
The disruptions have upended weddings in India as many families and guests were stranded at airports.
Hundreds of passengers gathered outside Bengaluru and Mumbai airports on Dec 6, with some clueless about their cancellations, according to Reuters photographers present at the scene.
Mr Satish Konde had to catch a connecting flight to go to the western city of Nagpur from Mumbai, and was checked in, but was told later it was cancelled.
“I am waiting for my luggage to be returned,” he told Reuters at the airport.
Pilots call exemption ‘selective dispensation’
The new pilot rest and duty rules capped the number of night landings to two from six and restricted the maximum number of hours a pilot can fly in the night to 10 hours.
For now, IndiGo has been exempted from both measures until Feb 10.
The new rules also said that if a pilot takes a personal leave, that cannot be substituted for his weekly rest period of 48 hours. That restriction too has been put on hold for all airlines, given the IndiGo crisis.
That has upset pilot labour groups, who told the government that safety must not be compromised to make up for IndiGo’s poor planning, the head of the Federation of Indian Pilots, Mr C.S. Randhawa, told Reuters.
The Airline Pilots Association of India objected on Dec 5, calling the relief for IndiGo “selective dispensation”.
The norms “exist solely to safeguard human life,” the association said in a letter to the government.
Other major Indian airlines, including Air India and Akasa, have not had to cancel flights due to the new rules. REUTERS
